/*
 * source: http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/
THE IDX FILE FORMAT
the IDX file format is a simple format for vectors and multidimensional matrices of various numerical types.

The basic format is

magic number
size in dimension 0
size in dimension 1
size in dimension 2
.....
size in dimension N
data

The magic number is an integer (MSB first). The first 2 bytes are always 0.

The third byte codes the type of the data:
0x08: unsigned byte
0x09: signed byte
0x0B: short (2 bytes)
0x0C: int (4 bytes)
0x0D: float (4 bytes)
0x0E: double (8 bytes)

The 4-th byte codes the number of dimensions of the vector/matrix: 1 for vectors, 2 for matrices....

The sizes in each dimension are 4-byte integers (MSB first, high endian, like in most non-Intel processors).

The data is stored like in a C array, i.e. the index in the last dimension changes the fastest.
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